Electronic mail (“e-mail”) messaging as a communication medium in one form or another has been used since at least the 1970's. For the first two decades of its life, however, e-mail led a somewhat cloistered existence in the halls of academia and the military and among computer enthusiasts. Two subsequent technological innovations, the personal computer and the World Wide Web, had a catalytic effect on this communication medium, causing it to explode into the mainstream. As a result, the use of e-mail as a communication medium has spread throughout the world.
Besides using e-mail for personal communications, e-mail is often used in commercial settings. The speed and interactive nature of e-mail have provided a wonderful communication medium for advertisers and consumers, for example. The multipurpose Internet mail extension (“MIME”) standard, currently used by most e-mail applications, allows fairly sophisticated ways of attaching many different types of files to an e-mail message to further expand e-mail's utility. Additionally, e-mail applications are now able to utilize hypertext (e.g., HTML) and active content components (e.g., Java, JavaScript and ActiveX) to provide these applications with additional functionality (e.g., special fonts, color, animations) for conveying information.
With ever more functionality being provided to e-mail applications, the potential for misuse has increased correspondingly. For instance, unsolicited mass e-mailings, otherwise known as “spam e-mail,” have wrought havoc on the Internet community. The software industry has responded by developing applications that typically operate on client machines for preventing or blocking spam e-mails sent to the client machine, as well as applications that block “pop-up”advertisements from opening in a client machine's web browser application. Further, it is expected that future versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer®operating system will incorporate spam and/or pop-up advertisement blocking features. While these applications effectively block spam e-mail and/or pop-up advertisements, they sometimes block legitimate e-mails and/or their attachments, and can prevent other systems from being able to establish legitimate communications with the client machines.
With the proliferation of connections to the Internet by a rapidly growing number of users, the viability of e-mail as a widely accepted medium of communication has increased correspondingly. Internet technology is changing rapidly to cope with ever increasing demands, and the faster the technology changes, the more services users expect from their e-mail applications. For example, users were once satisfied with simple text messages in their e-mail, but now they expect to be able to use the extended functionalities mentioned above that are now available in e-mail. For example, video files (e.g., .wav files) delivered over the Internet to client machines are being used more frequently to convey vast amounts of information more effectively. These video files can easily be attached to e-mail messages sent to the client machines.
However, the size of these video files is typically relatively large compared with other types of files. Consequently, attaching video files to e-mail messages results in clogging e-mail applications and imparting additional traffic on the networks (e.g., Internet) used to transmit the e-mail and accompanying video attachments. Further, the spam blocking applications mentioned above may prevent the e-mail applications on the client machines from accepting legitimate video file attached e-mails and/or the attachments. If the user at the client machine never receives or accesses the video file attachment, then network and client machine resources are wasted unnecessarily. Additionally, when users receive e-mails with video attachments at their client machines, accessing the video attachments and playing the video can be problematic. The video content in the video file attachment must be formatted so that the client machine is able to play the video content using the particular video player application operating on the client machine. The source of the video content must have this information before they can send the video content to the client machine or risk sending video content that the client machine will not be able to play.
Another way of delivering video content to client machines besides attaching video files to e-mails that has become popular is streaming video. With streaming video, lectures or seminars can be broadcasted, announcements can be made, or demonstrations on how to do something can be delivered to users. Streaming video allows users at client machines to access and play video sent over a network as the video is being downloaded by the client machine instead of first sending the entire video file to the client machine, such as an e-mail video file attachment. After a user's client machine spends a few seconds buffering a portion of downloaded streaming video, the machine is able to begin playing the video using a video player installed on the machine. Some of the most popular streaming video players currently being used include Windows Media Player®, Apple Quicktime® and RealVideo®. Streaming video has become so common that most client machines, such as personal computers, have one or more streaming video players already installed when purchased from a retailer.
E-mail can be used to leverage the advantages of delivering streaming video to client machines over a network. For example, a hyperlink may be included in an e-mail message sent to a user at a client machine that indicates the location of some streaming video content that may be downloaded and played by the client machine. As in the case of complete video files that are sent as attachments to e-mails, however, the video content in the streaming video must be formatted so that the client machine can play the video content using the particular video player application operating on the client machine. Further, the streaming video must be formatted to be sent at a particular data transfer rate that the client machine will be able to receive and process the video stream at, otherwise the quality of the video content may be deprecated or the client machine may not even be able to play the video. To ensure the video content is formatted properly, the source of the streaming video must select a version of the video content that is formatted appropriately for the client machine.
As mentioned above, a hyperlink to some video content may be included in an e-mail message sent to a client machine that a user at the machine may select. Selecting this hyperlink may cause a web browser application operating on the client machine to load a particular web page bearing further information relating to accessing the video content. The most common way for the source of the video content to obtain the information necessary for determining the appropriate version of video content to send the client machine is to ask the user a series of questions or provide several drop down menus in the web page regarding the client machine's operating environment.
However, this requires additional effort on the user's part and requires the users to have some knowledge of their machine's operating environment. Users savvy enough to be able to provide their machine's environment information find this process tedious and cumbersome. Some users may not bother to provide the information needed to determine the correct version of the video to send. Other users who are not familiar with their machine's environment information will simply give up trying to download the video rather than spend time trying to obtain this information. Aside from depriving the user from viewing the video, there may be other less obvious but far reaching consequences. For instance, the video may contain advertisements in which case the advertisers lose potential sales. Still further, the spam and pop-up advertisement blocking applications mentioned above may prevent the client machines from communicating with the video source provider to provide the necessary information.